Lilli CarréCritiques

Unpredictable, dreamy and surrealistic: what more could be asked from a collection of short graphic novels? Carré knows how to tell stories and use colors to create different moods. A gem.

In this graphic novel, Tippy has the strangest thing happen to her. When she falls asleep, she unknowingly sleep walks and gathers many animals throughout the night. This book is great for all level of elementary school children. It could also help children who are nervous about sleep walking or just want a laugh.

Dreamy, whimsical fun.

I rarely have bad dreams, but when I do it usually revolves around being unprepared or being in an insane time crunch. I might be packing a suitcase and I can't find a piece of clothing. I get stuck in a kind of time loop, frantically digging around drawers and turning up nothing. Meanwhile, the cab is waiting outside or I can see a giant clock or maybe I can see the plane from an airport lounge about to take off without me. I don't know what Freud would say but I can imagine this kind of dream sequence squeezed inside the pages of Heads or Tails.

Heads or Tails by Lilli Carré is an odd collection of short stories that visually strike a light, whimsical tone but are deceptively dark, even bordering on gothic. There is a streak of breathy melancholy in the surreal snippets created by Carré that reminded me of something from a Marc Chagall painting.

Dreams are often thought of as illogical but despite their bizarre topsy-turvyness, there's always an emotional rationale, right? Dream logic. Lilli Carré's stories blur that line between the mundane of waking life and the weird of some alternate reality of that waking life. In "Wishy Washy," a smug art critic who judges flower arrangements for a living wakes up one day and finds he has lost his ability to judge. That one was profound. In "The Thing About Madeleine," a woman encounters her double sleeping in her bed. She lets this other woman take over her life and enjoys watching a 'better' version of herself: “… like watching a movie with the sound turned low.” In "The Flip," a woman tosses a coin…and waits and waits. When the coin never reappears, she is stuck, frozen in her decision-making. The most complex story in the collection is "The Carnival," told in 32 pages, about a man (kind of like the woman in the doppelganger story) who goes through life feeling dull and miserable, and then suddenly wakes up in a kind of alternate world--he is awakened. "The Carnival" ends with ambiguity that makes sense on some dream logic level.

Carré's artwork is quite elegant, if quirky and twee. But what makes it special is how each panel is suffused with those sly, surreal twists and subconscious desires. Kinda cool, kinda creepy. It's creepy for the outward fact that it's not trying to be creepy. It's unsettling for its utter nonchalance. At one point a character happens to start levitating into the air. She says, "These hot winds…what a bother. I suppose I could give in just for a minute or two...." As one critic on NPR put it: "The whole collection has the feel of a dream in which remembering how to fly is as simple as forgetting that you can't."

Tried to hard for a mystical ending. Typical.

The swamp monster saved this from one star. The artwork is pretty, but the story... well there isn't much a story. Her parents are dead! Nothing? Nothing? If there hadn't been that scene in the beginning where the mom is going on about her dad picking flowers I would've though this was two different houses.

While I've read some of Lilli Carre's work before, I wasn't quite prepared for this one - it's clever, melancholy, humorous, and highly original. Each of the short pieces in Nine Ways to Disappear is unique, and the small size of the pages fits Carre's style perfectly, since her technique is simple yet artfully executed, with each page image beautifully centered in a decorated border, just like a picture frame. Definitely my favorite so far from the Lillie Carre oeuvre.

A beautiful graphic novel. Full of dark negative spaces and mysteries. Enjoyed.

I first saw some of Lilli Carre's work on the cover of The Best American Comics 2006 and reading an excerpt of her book Tales of Woodsman Pete within its pages. I went on to read Tales of Woodsman Pete in its entirety and I think it is my favorite of her full length pieces. Last year I read The Lagoon and never shared my thoughts on it because I'm not sure I completely understood it. So I was excited to see what Carre had come up with in Nine Ways to Disappear and I'm pleased to say it's pretty great!

Nine Ways to Disappear is an assortment of long and short stories told frame by frame, some with words others without. I loved that they all carried the theme of disappearing but it completely different ways. One of my favorite stories was Wide Eyes, about a man that ends up hiding between his girlfriend's eyes to get a break from her. I also liked The Pearl, which is about the journey of the pearl and who finds it, takes it, becomes one with it...

Let's talk about the format, the book is a little square that is pretty thick with pages. Because of that and the way it's bound it's pretty hard to keep those tiny little pages open so I had to fight the book to keep it open since I wasn't about to try and crack the spine.

Overall these are some clever little stories with a strangely awesome sense of humor!

This is a haunting tale, filled with the nostalgia of childhood. The wistful tune sung by the mysterious monster from the lagoon draws people to the dangers of the deep: "I wouldn't trust it, but that doesn't mean I can resist a lovely serenade when I have the chance to hear one".

Zoey manages to avoid its charms, but her life is still irrevocably changed by this beast.